Not Betraying the Self
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 7:12AM
When I tore apart my right knee in a surfing accident, years ago, I had to make a decision. My surgeon made eye contact with me and said, "Good news is your first surgery was successful. The bad news is, your leg is infected and if we don't do someting about it, becasue of the nature of the infection, you could either lose your leg or die." He looked at my face. he knew what I was feeling. I wasn't saying anything. He said, "Look, it's New Years Day. Nobody schedules surgery on New Years Day, if you want to get better we have to do it, it's an emergency. I need your cooperation to help you." And though I didn't want to go through and endure the pain of another surgery, especially so close to the last one, I surrendered, and made myself available to the process of getting better.
I had to drop my rebellious nature, the magical thinking of it will get better on it's own, accept doing what it took to help myself. It was learning to focus and do things that I didn't particulary want to do, but needed to do, so that I didn't end up essentially, put something off that needed to be done and in the end betray myself.
Surrender... that moment when we can set our ego, plans, and whatever else aside. To stop resisting the help. Allow myself to have the key to settle and live in my heart more times than not, on a day-to-day basis. Whenever I resist, I usually end up getting hurt in some way.
Zen practice, sitting on the black cushion has been a kind of surrender. The surrender for me has been, not resisting the sit. It's when I put my butt on the zafu (meditation cushion) not going into Jaye or Seiho world, but facing myself straight up... no resistence... no averting the eyes... no running away... just facing and turning into the fight of Buji, coming to the present moment, so I can stop betraying myself by letting go of the things I am obsessing on at the present time, that doesn't allow me to live in the here and now. Put another way, setteling into the Heart... or Mind... or 360 degree awareness of Compassion.
My goal day-to-day is not to be a so-called perfect human. My goal is to live by positive values more today than I did yesterday. When I give into my old self-centered, self-obsessed behaviors (Addiction), impulsivity and compulsion take over and things usually don't turn out well. Then it's not very hard to betray the self. In fact it's overly easy. I am a human being and I would prefer to unfold in the process of living that way. But to live in a policy of caring, it requires not just talking a talk, but living what we say too, so that we have congruence and integrity. To surrender is to win... the opportunity to change, grow and hopefully improve.
May We Learn Not to Be A Source of Our Own Suffering,
Jaye Seiho Morris 淸峰, Curator
digitalZENDO
Reader Comments (4)
Beautiful, thought-provoking words, Jaye, thanks.
No problem, whatsoever.
Hands Palm to Palm.
~Seiho
Seiho, terrific site! well done! Gassho, C.
Seiho, e-mail address error in previous post. This one is good! C.